Vivian's Fashion Design Course Journal 1

Today I went to pay the fees at the
institute of fashion study. This is a branch of the main
institute, which is based in Cairo. I live in Alexandria, which is a
Mediterranean coastal city in the north of Egypt. Alexandria was first
built by Alexander the Great in his conquest for Egypt, and it was the city
where Cleopatra lived and reigned over Egypt. It was the city home for
the old Library of Alexandria, which was brought down by a fire. Now
Egypt has built another great Library, which replaces the old one, on the
same site, and is called Bibliotheca Alexandria.

I just started my first steps towards a
career in fashion design, and to tell you the truth I feel somewhat
anxious. Stepping into unknown grounds is a little risky, especially a
change which is as dramatic as mine. You see, I decided to leave medicine
(as I am a physician), and pursue fashion design as a career. I dreamt
of
it since I was 13 years old. This was when I first began to draw fashion.

At that time, fashion design was like a
form of art, by which I was able to express my moods and my emotions as
clothes that I drew on girls. I was good in arts and crafts, but fashion was
not only my past-time hobby, but was a form of a spontaneous outlet for my
inner self. At that age, I had no idea it was fashion design, until 3 years
later when a parent of one of my school friends, whom was a fashion
consultant, told her daughter that I had a talent for fashion design.

However, by the time it was time for me to
choose a college to continue my post-secondary education; there weren't any
specialized fashion schools in Egypt. There were technical textile
engineering courses in the faculties of engineering, as well as courses for
textile engineering, and special courses of tailoring. This wasn't what I hoped for
as a career.

Since I also like biology, and excelled in
it in my secondary education, I decided to join medicine. It was a safe
social and financial choice. It pleased my parents, because it was their
dream for me to be a doctor! But fashion design continued to be a pastime
hobby as before, but it was agonizing for me when people saw my sketches,
and told me that I had a great talent.

I graduated 9 years ago from
college, and now I am supposedly in the midst of my residency practice to
become an internist. I also started my Masters degree. But to me, I had
no deep satisfaction no matter how good I was doing in Medicine. I even
cannot see myself as a doctor practicing in my own clinic, and was always
questioning myself what if I went to study art instead.

Every time I drew I become very sad,
because it ended up in the drawer stored away with others. To tell
you the truth, I was also good at medicine, but it seemed I had no real goal
in it, and that made my master years longer to study. I was in no real rush
to pursue medicine as a career. That prolongation made me feel as a failure,
and I got very depressed, and can take it no more. I left medicine since a
year, and stayed at home.

I began to research about different
careers involving art and design, but nothing fulfilled what I longed
for, until one day I stumbled upon the fashion institute in Cairo. I began
to do my homework, and found out that it had a branch in Alex. I was very
pleased, and I couldn't believe that dreams might come true one day.

Well, now I made the decision to start
the career in fashion design, and my first step is to study it. The
institute that I attend offers 3 main diplomas, and plenty of
specialized little courses. I will start the "Fashion Stylist" diploma, and
it is a 20 months study.

The study has 2 main courses. One is the
"fashion design", and it is the artistic part of the study . At the end
of this course I will be able to find my own design style, and know how to
design for all ages and body forms. We will also know how to design seasonal
collections. We will also know about various drawing and colouring
techniques.

The other is the pattern study and
execution of clothes, and this is the technical part. The pattern study
course will enable me to produce a plan for the garment on paper, and
execute it onto fabric, finally to be the garment that I designed. At the
end of the diploma, I will also be able to design other fashion apparel as
shoes and bags, jewellery and accessories. We will also study about
the history of fashion, market research, tailoring and sewing, fabrics and
yarns etc.

The good part of the institute, is that they
will allow us to choose our own time schedules, and the teachers will
work with each student at his/her independent pace. This is very much
different from my study in medicine. They will also allow our creativity to
flourish during our study, and this is also different from medicine. In
medicine, we just have to do research and memorise books full of diseases.
The only time we engage with patients is in the practical rounds,
and only to speak to them to reach a diagnosis. Treatment comes later
after graduation, and we are not allowed to be creative until fresh
graduates become specialists.

The institute in Egypt is under the
supervision of a famous Italian institute, which teaches fashion, and
the examiners will also be Italians. However, the teachers are Egyptians,
but are very qualified and are chosen by the Italian administration.

Today was my first lesson at the
institute. I have never been so excited at doing something in my whole life. Well there are other few occasions in my life, but this one far outweighs
most of them. It feels like a walk in the sky, and I am able to grasp my
life-long dream, which seemed before as a cloud I can only watch. However,
there is some anxiety about my career change, but as the tutor began to
teach me about the first steps of taking body measurements the anxiety had
subsided.

Today was my first two pattern lessons.

I never knew how to put a needle on a thread,
nor sew a button, nor shorten pants. Mum used to design her own clothes and
sew them on a sewing machine. She tried to pass this hobby of hers to me
when I was young, but I failed a lot. This took so much time and patience,
and I preferred to draw. I never agreed with her how important
tailoring and pattern design was for fashion designers, until recently when
I was searching for the fashion institute. I just had found out that
tailoring, sewing and pattern study are an integral part of most of the
fashion school courses. I guess I owe her a big apology.

Well my first pattern lesson was tough. I
never knew that there was something even tougher than medicine. The body
measurements were a very easy and smooth introduction to the basic pattern
design. For the people with math phobia; WATCH OUT!!. I was on the verge of
melting my brain from over concentration. I was overwhelmed by numbers,
letters, and equations. It was like an algebra lesson, joined with technical
drawing. At some point I thought that I had a mental block, and my brain
seized to function.

I kept saying to myself, if I was smart
enough to study medicine, this entire math is a piece of cake. (In
Egypt, the secondary school graduates with the highest grades only are
allowed to join medicine). Common, I could do it, but at the back of
my mind I kept on remembering how I was a wreck in math and physics.
That was why I was interested in medicine. No numbers…..

That evening I went to buy all the equipment needed for the pattern course. I borrowed the centres
in today's lesson, except for a specialized large French curve (made of
transparent plastic) and a roll of 10 draft papers which I bought. The
French curve is for drawing the curves needed for the pattern design.

The draft papers are also large paper on
which I will draw real size patterns of the garment. Other kinds of paper
will be 350/450mm cardboard paper, transparent vellum for tracing, and A-4
blank paper for sketches and colouring (must be adequate for all markers,
pens, inks, water colours, pencils, colour pencils, crayons, pastels,
charcoals etc.).

I bought an ordinary 60cm ruler, and a 1/4
scale ruler (which is a prismic 30cm ruler, and has a different scale on
each edge of the prism). The latter ruler will allow me to draw small scales
of the pattern. Yeah, I bought also a geometric triangle, which is a right
angle triangle, with 1cm gradings all over it's surface and edges, as well
as a protractor scale on one of its surfaces.

I bought a large art bag to contain all
these materials, as well as a tube, which will carry the paper
rolls, and a large pencil case. I think this will be the start of a somewhat
expensive and a very demanding course, not mentioning the fabric that I will
buy later on for my projects and exam modules!

At home, I went over what I took for the
basic bodice pattern design, and I drew one for myself as my pattern
tutor gave me for homework. Everything made sense. I don't know why I did
have the mental block, but maybe I was startled at the entire math at the
beginning, or maybe because it was a different teaching technique than how I
studied for medicine. I will get used to it eventually.

It took me the whole evening to draw my
real-size basic bodice pattern. The basic bodice pattern is similar to
the base for drawing a simple T-shirt without its sleeves, which I will take
later in the course. It constitutes of two quarters, half of the front of
the body, and the other is half of the back.

First I measured myself with the help of
my husband. Then I did the whole calculations needed with a calculator,
and then I drew a sample basic bodice pattern using the quarter scale ruler,
i.e. the sample is quarter the size of the real size bodice. I used
the triangle to acquire perpendicular lines for the grid base of the bodice.
I also used the French curve for the curves. The sample bodice seemed O.K.

I did the real size basic bodice pattern
on the draft paper. It took a long time to produce, and a tremendous
effort of concentration, but it looks good at the end. I hope that I will be
quicker and more efficient as I get used at drawing the pattern, otherwise
this time consumption will not be in my favour later on in my career.

Excitement is nothing to what I felt today
as I was waiting to start my design lesson. Yesterday I was full of
anticipation, that I couldn't sleep the night. This was what I have been
waiting for.

Last time at the centre I couldn't
speak to both of the students that were there. 'There were several
students, and some of them are taking the stylist diploma, and some are
taking the design diploma. Some of the students are graduates of textile
engineering, and some were fine art students. One was a pharmacist, who owns
her own pharmacy, and another is a physician, whom was older than me. They
have the same designing talent as I am, and they were eager to pursue it, as
they heard about the institute. It is never too late to pursue a dream, no
matter what one will give up. I guess I wasn't the only one who jumped
between careers, and that was conciliation. But I wonder, will the
expertise that I missed for not studying textile engineering will affect my
career later on? I don't know….

As we talked I found out that there are some
who are already in the garment industry. A couple of them own their own
small businesses, and some work in bigger factories, but the majority are
here to study to start their own ateliers or small factories. As for me all
I want is to be a fashion designer. Who knows? Maybe in the future I might
start my own haute couture atelier, or maybe a new fashion ready-to- wear
brand. Perhaps produce designs for the cinema or the theatre. I still did
not specify what to do, but I like to think in the short time range. My
first priority is to concentrate in my study for now, and as I go on I will
research in all these alternatives. I guess my preferences will show later
on.

Our design tutor came, and gave us an
introduction about what we will study for design, and she insisted that
we must exercise drawing very plenty, so that we could master it. We started
the first lesson for the newcomers.

It was about drawing the female nude body
standing in the erect position, with the 3 views; front back
and the side. We have to draw it in a grid of 2 squares wide and 8 squares
high, with the feet protruding different lengths below the grid, depending
upon the view. Drawing of the female inside the grid is important to help us
to draw the female in the right proportions. This seemed to be easy, but it
was difficult in practice.

It needs so much of an artistic talent as a
base to master design, so that the hand can move smoothly in drawing the
figure. But this is not the only prerequisite. Knowledge of anatomy is
needed, too. This knowledge I had from my previous study of medicine.
Anatomy is important for the ability to draw all the details of the body in
the right place, and in the right configurations.

For example, if you will be able to draw the
neck descending down to the shoulders, the knowledge of the major neck
muscles and the bone construction for the neck and the upper part of the
chest is important to draw it very realistic, with the curve and the
shadings of the neck, the shoulders and the collar bones.

However, the most annoying part of the
grid is that it constricts me to draw in a specific size for every part of
the body. I mean, I wasn't a professional artist, but for years I
developed a particular configuration of the body in my illustrations that I
feel comfortable to draw. This was a tall slim flat figure, with long
legs in relation to the chest, and long angular faces (gives a sophisticated
20's feel to the model).

But drawing this female body in the grid
is very time consuming, and very frustrating for the first few times.
This technique forces me to draw the models relatively curved and fuller.
The face is very different from my long angular faces, and the legs have
very large feet and calf muscles. The new legs I learned are sexier
and more dramatic than my old ones, although in the institute's design
courses they are very gigantic in relation to the normal anatomical
configurations that I knew from medicine. I always crippled in drawing
the curve of the waist starting from the chest down to the hip. I keep
slimming it, and my design tutor keeps inflating it.

The other hard thing was to draw
symmetrical shoulders, with the equal sloping angles and with the right
length. My design tutor told me that these are minor mistakes, which I
will correct if I practiced more. The back and the side view were
easier than I had expected, and I quickly mastered these.

As a start, I was O.K. Although I thought
I can do better. Maybe it will take time for me to draw like
a professional artist. Until today I was an amateur with little or
basic knowledge of art since my school years. This was more than a
decade ago!!! However, today I saw some who had a really difficult
time in the design lesson. They did not seem to have the talent for
drawing, and it took the design tutor nearly all her time with them. I
don't want to be a sensor or an imposer, but what the heck do they do in
here? I thought to myself; "If they do not have the talent and it
is hard for them to draw, why do they waste good money, effort and time
taking design? They should have taken only pattern courses".
As I understood from them, design is a mere additive skill, which is
important for them to be more qualified for job security. Only time
will tell who will manage to continue with the design course, and who will
lag behind…...

Today it is time for more shopping.
The design tutor told us to buy the tools we will be using for the design.
PENCILS and more pencils…. She told us we will continue to perfect our
drawing and shading techniques before we start colouring…. We will need later
all kinds of colours as markers, crayons, charcoals, water colours and
fabric colours etc. But at the moment there is no need to rush
for the colours. I am glad that she decided to delay the usage of some
things. Too much unnecessary stuff will be a strain on the budget.

The problem is that the most used pens for
colouring are the Pantone colour markers. I don't believe it. These
aren’t sold in Egypt at all. These markers must either be bought at the
institute or ordered via the net. I guess I have to try the net, maybe I can
get cheaper deals than what they offer in the institute. One marker will
cost, either way, too much in Egyptian pounds, so I guess it will be a
strain on the budget now or later…...

There are cheaper markers on the market,
but are of less quality and have a less colour spectrum. The design
tutor will teach us the rest of the colouring techniques, and it is up to us
to choose the markers to colour with. But if I want to build up a
professional portfolio I have to bring them. At the meantime, there is no
hurry for them. I have to search the net for good deals.

Well I bought several HB pencils, and
different B and H pencils (2, 4, and 6 of the latter two kinds). These are
important to give different shading intensities. I bought different rubbers; Sanford's art
gum is important for rubbing pencil markings with cleansing effects to
remove smudges off the paper. Staedtler's Mars Rasor rubber is shaped like a
pencil, with a brush at the end. This is important for rubbing fine lines in
highly detailed drawings, and also can be used for shading.

There is also what we call mix pencils.
These are very peculiar pencils that I saw them for the first time in my
life; these are wooden pencils with no leads, and are wrapped I guess by a
tissue, and are needed to mix shades in a harmonious way. I also bought new
pencil colours; a set of 24 Staedtler colours. I really missed buying
colours. I last bought colours when I was in school in Kuwait. These were
the 36 Lyra colour set, and thank goodness I still have them. I will use
them to obtain more colour shades.

Buying the colours made me feel good.
Whenever I went for shopping for stationeries, I always wished to buy
colours and use them like a professional, but I never had time during my
medicine years except for frequent quick pencil sketches and an occasional
coloured illustration with my old pencil colours. Well, I feel what I hoped
for is coming true. I always wanted to work with colours
professionally, and
here I am. I feel alive again!

It is time for my two pattern lessons
today. I chose to take my twice weekly pattern lessons on the same
day, and the design lessons will be on Thursdays. Unfortunately, there
will be a slight deviation in our schedule in the next month. Ramadan (The
Muslim Holly month of prayer and fasting) will start at the end of this
week. The working day will be shortened, and that means I will be taking
pattern twice a week. Design will be postponed until after Ramadan,
because I can't take an extra 2 days for design.

I felt a bit let off. I enjoyed design a
lot. The design lesson made me feel as if I was in the midst of my dream
as a true fashion designer, although all I drew were erect female bodies in
3 different views. Delaying it made me feel very disappointed.
However, if I waited all these years to reach my dream, why couldn't I wait
for another month? On the contrary, it is a good chance for more
practice for me to forget my old drawing habits. I did not practice
drawing until now, although it has been 2 days since my last design lesson.

Well, today I learned how to add ease
allowance on the basic pattern bodice. Ease allowance is the extra few centimetres added on the basic bodice pattern to give the garment
extra space between it and its wearer's body. This is to allow for comfort
during any movement and posture of the body, and allows also for the
different layers of the clothes to be worn on top of each other.

Ease allowance also depends on the
person's body faults, and the style and fabric of the garment. This was
easy to produce, but it still took me a while to produce the basic bodice
pattern, taking about 40-50 minutes a pattern.

The second of today's lessons was
cutting the basic bodice pattern into fabric. This was exciting. I
always thought that sewing was one of the mysteries of the tailor's
universe. Mum was a telecommunication engineer, yet she knew how to sew and
tailor her clothes. It was her pastime hobby, and she made some of my
favourite garments when I was young. She stopped since a long time.

My wedding dress was especially tailored
for me, and I was the one who helped the tailor for the design, but
communication between us was very hard. I thought he was difficult to deal
with, but now as it turned out that I was the one who was the pain. If the
clock was to turn back, I would communicate my thoughts about the dress
better. That is why I think pattern is important to any fashion designer.

I enjoyed these steps for cutting the
fabric. It is like an art and craft lesson that I used to love and enjoy
very much back at school, and it is a kind of a break from the technical
pattern design. First of all, the pattern is traced on transparent vellum,
and then its copy is cut after adding seam allowance on it. Seam allowance is the extra centimetres
which surround the whole nett pattern, so that it will be used
for sewing, allowing for extra safe space between the initial pattern lines
and the ragged cut edges of the fabric.

After that, the cut bodice pattern on the
transparent vellum is pinned to the folded fabric, and then the fabric is
cut by scissors. The whole complex is then placed on the fabric carbon
paper, with the fabric facing the carbon paper. The bodice pattern is traced
on the lower face of fabric as the rollette (tracing wheel) slides
over the top tracing paper, which is still pinned to the fabric. With extreme care the pins are removed from
the tracing paper, but are placed underneath it to join the two layers of
fabric. This step removes the transparent paper pattern without separating
both layers of fabric. The fabric is then turned so that its unblotted
surface faces the carbon paper, and using the rollette sliding on the
top of the blotted pattern lines, the bodice pattern will be blotted at the
lower face.

The bodice pattern which was drawn on the
draft paper is a quarter of the front and the back of the body, and
these steps for transferring it on fabric will allow it to be transferred
into the front and back halves of the body. I then pinned the front and back
halves at the side lines, and packed them in my art bag until next lesson to
sew them together, because this lesson had ended at that point.

Today it was my most excited moment ever. I
was allowed to use the sewing machine to sew my basic bodice that I prepared
on fabric and had cut last lesson. I actually came near that machine that I
used to consider a monster when I was young. When we were young, my brother
and I weren't allowed to get near my mother's sewing machine. Considering
the immense size of its needle, and the speed at which it goes up and down,
we thought of it as a monster. We weren't enthusiastic to get near it any
ways…...

Well I still considered it to be a
monster, and it's time to tame it. It was my first time sitting at it,
and I remember my heart was pumping, especially when my pattern tutor showed
me how to sew. Her hands quickly and spontaneously were moving all over the
machine, as she hooked the thread, and put on the fabric and placed down the
needle and began to sew quickly one side of the bodice. I couldn't get anything, except the way she
moved the fabric. As long as the thread was in place, I felt it good to
continue after her, and sew the rest of the fabric.

What can go wrong? I began to sew, and everything went wrong.

After sewing a whole line, I found out that
there was nothing sewn, and I found out that the thread keeps on
disappearing inside the machine, and my design tutor taught me how to
correct it.

Sometimes it tangled into a mess underneath
the fabric and at that point the machine clenched and failed to rotate. She
also told me how to deal with that thing too. Then the thread kept on
retracting away from the needle, and she showed me again how to hook it on,
but this kept on returning again. In fact it seems that every line
took from me ages and ages. I also had the needle broken and replaced. Not
mentioning the zigzagged and wavy line I sewed instead of the supposedly
straight pattern lines. This is because the machine was going very fast as I
sewed, and I was slow on directing the fabric.

Any tiny move of the fabric in any direction
will mean a large diversion in the sewing. It is just like driving a
car at a high speed, any tiny diversion of the steering wheel means going
far from the straight line. My tutor told me to concentrate at how I
control the fabric movement, and to lower the speed of the sewing machine by
not stepping at the peddle too much. But sometimes lowering the speed allows
the tangling of the thread below the fabric producing that dreaded clenching
of the machine.

Well now the sewing machine is less of a
monster than it was, but it can be very frustrating for a beginner like me. I think my tutor was very frustrated being called every few minutes by me
for assistance. I pitied her. What would it feel like for her if there were
more like me? She will eventually get mad !! I apologized to her at
the end of the lesson, and promised her that I will do better and be less of
a nuisance next time.

Finally I finished sewing, and my crusade
at the machine was over for now. I ironed it and turned it inside out to
see how it looked finally. It was great except for the smudges of my yellow
fabric carbon. The sewing lines didn't look very curvy.

Back at home, I was very pleased with it,
and I kept wearing it. I felt very proud of it, and I couldn't believe
that I accomplished something like that. Nor did my husband. He was very
pleased that this course began to show some results. I can't wait to design
and do a garment completely by myself.

What I need is to practice sewing at home,
and to buy a sewing machine. I think this course is really stretching
the budget. I was told that we will do monthly projects, which will be a
reflection on what we took all along the month, and this means higher
quality fabrics, buttons or zippers and other apparel depending on what will
the style be. This is nothing compared to the designs I will do and execute
for the final examinations. Well medicine wasn't cheap too!

Today, I was taken a bit further down the
line, and took the basic bodice pattern with darts. Luckily for me, it
was one pattern lesson, for it was again the turn for my brain to steam a
little more today. I thought we will study maybe the collars or
sleeves, since the basic bodice pattern was taught. But no, it was the
basic bodice pattern with a further step - How to draw darts on it. It
took more time and more brain work, but it seemed easier doing it again at
home. I do not know why I seem to be taken aback at every new step at
pattern design. I should be more at ease and keep an open mind at
every new thing.

Maybe the reason for this is that the rules
have to be deviated at every new step at studying pattern.

It takes a lot of imagination to
understand every alteration in the pattern. In the clinical years
at studying medicine, we used to study diseases by the same basic scheme.
This was similar to a check list to keep all issues considering any disease
in mind. We use this scheme in every disease whether studying it or
diagnosing and treating it. Even diseases, involving one system of the
body, symptomised similarly, and only few symptoms and some investigations
varied between them. These monotonous schemes were useful in
memorizing diseases, and imagination and creativity played a lower role in
our practice. Even in postgraduate study and research this was the
same. Remember the cartoon "Follow the Dancing DOT"!!!!!!!!!!

But I have to get used to the rapidly
evolving pattern course. I have to let my brain break loose, and I
have to control my fretting. Surprisingly, pattern also follows the
same basic rules, but it has to be changed a little to add the darts, and
other details. It needs more imagination to understand it, and to deal
with it. I t needs a lot of patience, too. It took me a whole three
hours to draw my bodice pattern with darts at home……

By the way, this bodice allows the garment
to be tight and more shaping of the body. Those darts are the sewing
lines you see in the front and the back of the garment. I was told
they were not only shaping, but are the base of a lot of creativity in the
style of the garment; as well it can give more ease allowance. Well, I
will see where this will lead me later…

Note from Pauline My sincere thanks to Vivian Mikhail for her
account to date of her fashion design experience. This account is Viv's
personal description of her course and feelings of excitement, jubilation and despair
to date. Viv forms part of Fashion-era.com's new section where
Visitor's contribute to the fashion-era site. This first account is of
the first 4 weeks of the Autumn 2004 session.

Read my comments to Vivian in
an open letter
to her on the next page where I suggest a few tips and suggestions to
her in relation to her first entries on her journey of discovery. You
can read how Vivian got on with sewing her first project in the immediate
following weeks here.

For more information on Visitor's Contributions to pages on
fashion-era.com:-

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